Opel will introduce all-new electric car in Europe in 2017

General Motor's European division, Opel, has announced plans for an "affordable" five-seat electric car in 2017.

The Ampera-e, as it will be known, will be based on the US Chevrolet Bolt, and the company expects to make a big hit with this car.

Well, it remains to be seen if the company will make a hit with this car – the vehicle is on its early stages of the development – but something we already know about “European brother” of Chevy Volt.

Let’s not waste any more time and take the bull by the horns – you are eager to know everything about the vehicle, aren’t you?

How will it look like?

As we mentioned at the very beginning, 2017 Opel Ampera-e is on its early stages of the development and even vehicle’s look is kind of a secret – as of now, we have only renderings.

Anyway, it’s enough to make at least some assumptions.

For instance, we can say that the vehicle will be quite spacious and it will have kind of indigenous design – definitely looks much better that the design of non-electric version of Ampera.

Spy photos

We don’t know if it’s 2017 Opel Ampera-e for sure, but the probability of it is quite high - such media resources as “caradvice” confirm it.

Plus, Brian Willams (photographer that took these photos) has deleted all the photos of Ampera-e shortly after its mass widespread.

Looks quite suspicious, isn’t it?

Three images attached present a car nearly identical to the 2017 Bolt.

However, if you go into details, you’ll see that these cars differ in many ways: Opel logo under light camouflage has kind of a different shape and Ampera-e doesn’t have huge chrome air intake found on the bottom half of the front of the Chevy Volt.

Performance

As we were mentioning before, we know only a few details about the vehicle.

Thus, detailed specs is an unattainable luxury.

However, expect for the EV with a range of at least 200 miles (320 kilometers) – Bolt goes 200 miles on a single charge, this car should go even further.

High expectations

GM put high expectations on this car and everything says about it, even the fact that Opel’s CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann says that Ampera-e will open up the road to electric mobility “by breaking down the barriers of high price and short driving range.”

This is a vehicle that should change our vision of EV.

"Like its twin, the Chevrolet Bolt EV, the Ampera-e promises to transform the electric vehicle market in Europe as the first EV that combines long range at an affordable price" – said GM Chief Executive Mary Barra during the conference in Germany.

However, let’s not forget that this market isn’t empty and competition with other automakers isn’t a simple thing to do (as of now, Tesla is taking pre-orders on Model 3).

Plus, this competition will be even fiercer after a year.

So, it remains to be seen if 2017 Opel Ampera-e will manage to conquer European automotive market.

Nonetheless, it’s a completely another story to talk about.

Let’s wish Opel (or General Motors, we should say) good luck and wait more news from them.